Some A4 porn

[daveboy]

A couple of years ago, a young man called me because he heard that I collected old, military rifles. He was in need of money, and had a rifle to sell. He told me that he had an old sniper rifle that he had recently inherited from his uncle when he passed. Said that his uncle had got it from "the army" in the early sixties and it had sat in a closet ever since. He had no idea what it was but noted that although it had a scope mount and rings, there was no scope included. He said that he had recently fired two rounds through it (un-aimed of course) and thought the recoil was more than he could handle. He said it took 30.06 ammo, which got my attention (his uncle had a few rounds stored with the rifle). I asked him to send me a few cellphone pics and I would get back to him. I was expecting a sporterized A3 at best. Imagine my excitement when I saw that off-center receiver stamp! Needless to say, I jumped on the purchase, but only after I told him that the rifle was worth much more than I could offer him. I told him exactly what he had, and that his uncle had likely purchased it from the DCM. He was happy to take what I offered. I ran a patch or two down the chamber, found a Weaver 330, and sent 5 rounds of my handloads downrange. With my bad eyesight, I put those 5 rounds within 1.5". The rifle was in bad need of some in-depth cleaning, and the stock looked like it had been drug behind a truck for a week or so. I gave the rifle a good cleaning, and put it in a new CMP stock until I had the time to work on the original stock. Finally, over the past several days, I was able to clean that stock up, apply a little stain and some BLO. Very happy with the results. 3642736428364293643036431[ATTACH=CONFIG

[daveboy]

More photos3643236433364343643536436

[daveboy]

And a few more:
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[daveboy]

All done.
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[Johnny P]

The RIA/EB stamp dates the rebuild to the 1947/1958 time period.

[Shooter5]

Nice! My old unit has a couple still around in the "foreign" weapons locker used for familiarization and training along with other obsolete US weapons such as the BAR, Garand, etc. No one shoots them much, if any. Soviet bloc weapons get all the attention for obvious reasons. On a few occassions we took out some unique sniper rifles from the SOTIC locker such as a PSG-1 but never the A4s. Alas, how regrettable.

[Promo]

Do I see it correctly that it is a Z prefix M1903A4?

[Emri]

Do I see it correctly that it is a Z prefix M1903A4?

That is what it looks like to me.

[jgaynor]

Yep its a "Z"... About 10% of a4's were in the "z" block. From the data collected about 10% of A4's that survive to day are "Z"'s.

[daveboy]

Yes, it's a Z. Does that mean anything? Also, a question for you experts: I know the scope that these rifles were supplied with were the military versions of the Weaver 330, with the knobs instead of the screws for adjustment (M73 as opposed to 330 I think). But, I have also read that before Weaver could ramp up production of the military version of the scope that some were delivered to the military in the civilian variant. Any comments on this? True or rumor?

[Glynn863]

I also found my A4 in Alabama, on a Facebook page last year. Young man I got it from said he purchased it from a sporting goods store in Tuscaloosa around 2010. It was sporterized, but the CMP Custom Shop has it now for some work.

[jgaynor]

Yes, it's a Z. Does that mean anything? Also, a question for you experts: I know the scope that these rifles were supplied with were the military versions of the Weaver 330, with the knobs instead of the screws for adjustment (M73 as opposed to 330 I think). But, I have also read that before Weaver could ramp up production of the military version of the scope that some were delivered to the military in the civilian variant. Any comments on this? True or rumor?
Two scopes were proposed for the A4. The 2.5x Lyman Alaskan (M73) and the 2.75x Weaver 330C (M73B1). The Lyman scopes were never delivered before A$ production ended due to the Lens subcontractor's involvement in other high priority war work. So the Weaver was the principal scope used on the A4 throughout its service life. Since Remington was under the gun to deliver the rifles they were forced to have Weaver scrounge its domestic outlets for any unsold 330 Variants. Somewhere from a few hundred to a few thousand were plain vanilla Weaver 330C's or 330 Scope M.8 (post reticle). The rest went back to Weaver to have GI nomenclature and serial numbers added by hand. Thereafter at about Scope s/n 10,000~ production versions of the M73B1 started to be delivered.

The government used some of the Weaver scopes with the locking screw adjustments in various optical applications. There is no evidence I am aware of that they were used on issue sniper rifles.

The "Z" was added to some serial numbers as a result of a numbering error in the plant. Ordnance had designated the s/n block 4,000,001 to 4,015,000 for the second purchase of A4's. In the other part of the plant 03-a3 production inadvertently overran into that range resulting in about 3000 receivers with the same number.

[daveboy]

Thank you for that info, jgaynor.